As for why New Jade Gate could get bigger discounts from the Alliance by making the purchases in its own name, there was no need to think too hard about it. Putting the reason out in the open would only embarrass most people.
In short, the three garrison divisions, reorganized according to standard Marine Corps divisions, had been completed. Their ranks were naturally made up mostly of sandfolk, with more than eighty percent of the soldiers being local natives. The small number of Lumina recruits mainly handled engineering and technical work.
There was no help for it. Only a little over a hundred thousand Lumina had initially come to support the development of New Shenzhou. After more than a year of settling immigrants, the number of Lumina who had decided to stay in New Shenzhou had only just passed three hundred thousand—and a considerable portion of them were the elderly, women, and children. This was understandable. The Lumina were a strong, resilient, and focused people, but they were also deeply attached to their homeland. Getting even this many to move was a testament to the efficiency of the Pioneer Party and the Lumina administration.
The bravest and most adventurous Lumina had already been recruited by the Thirty-Eighth Division. Sending the rest to the front lines would have been a little inhumane.
By contrast, the local sandfolk made up more than sixty percent of the garrison divisions' officer corps, as if no one had the slightest concern that they might rebel.
The Alliance and the Empire, after all, also retained large ground-combat forces made up of other species. In those units, even when nearly all the cannon fodder in a division came from other species, eight or nine out of every ten officer positions still had to be held by humans.